Power and the money, money and the power, minute after minute, hour after hour.

It's not often one feels compulsed to entitle a blog post with American Gangster rap circa 1995. But it's a rather apt extract.

First of all let me praise the industriousness of our emergency services for their hard work during the flooding in Aberystwyth ad Machynlleth. Until something of this nature happens to you it is difficult to understand the traumatic affect it can have. As parts of Ceridigion were submerged under five foot of water and clean up operations continue to take place in Talybont, Dol-y-Bont and Llandre I trust that the Welsh Government will do all it can not just to help households and businesses seek compensation but to prevent such incidents ever happening again. It is also imperative that authorities thoroughly screen flood waters for potential contamination which could affect farms or even the local water supply.

While it poured here in Wales, the rain in Spain thundered down from a dark economic storm cloud hovering over the banking sector. Indeed despite weeks of protestations we all knew to be vacuous, Spain finally had to plead for a bail out to stabilise the country’s inexplicable nexus between state funds and banking finance. The Spanish Government had borrowed extensively from the banks to fund a burgeoning structural deficit, yet after the property bubble burst in the 2008 credit crunch, the Government was then forced to start bailing out the banks. Now however finances ministers have agreed to pour £100bn to shore up Spanish finances. However a more conservative estimate for the figure needed is £400bn. Even though the sticking plaster may calm the markets temporarily, what is startling is how this will have a knock on effect across Europe. Mediterranean neighbour Italy is responsible for providing no less than 22% of the bail out at a shrivelled repayment rate of just 3%. But in order to cough up the funds, Italy herself must borrow from the markets, at a rate of interest of 7%, inevitably dragging her below the gathering rip tide. Meanwhile the loan to the Spanish Government itself will actually add a further 10% on top of already astronomical state debt. You could hardly make this stuff up.

And still the problems with Greece are not solved. In fact on the 17th June Greece is set to go to the polls again – a day which could see a newly elected government steadfastly refuse to abide by the austerity measures conditional of receiving future financial aid. No wonder. These imposed cuts have ripped the economy to shreds throwing hundreds of thousands out of work, leaving pharmacies empty of life saving medicines, slashing welfare payments as the state finance pot runs totally dry forcing families onto the streets to beg for food. A ‘Grexit’ is liable before the month of June is even up. The exposure of the European Central Bank to bail out countries such as Greece is almost €500 billion. If Greece leaves the single currency, that is likely to cause the ECB itself to go bust, unless it can recoup money from Portugal, Ireland and Spain.

Speculation among Eurosceptics and Financiers alike is that the whole sorry mess was intentionally engineered to force Europe into becoming a European Republic. It has been common consensus for years that a single currency cannot work with so many different Exchequers. As the crisis struck, instead of Brussels shrinking from its disastrous fiscal errors, instead the call has been for deeper integration, forcing the burden of debt to be passed from neighbour to neighbour dragging each and every country into the same calamitous myre. The next country veering headlong towards bail out is Cyprus, and while we are not in the single currency, the exposure of British banks to European debt is an eye watering $430bn, or 19 per cent of our GDP.

Customers of Santander may fear the fate of their savings given the bank’s Spanish parent, but the bank is one of the least vulnerable in the wake of a dramatic and increasingly likely Euro crash. Barclays and RBS, the latter having been already bailed out by the British taxpayer, have the greatest amount of money tied up in the Eurozone. A total of £191.8 billion is estimated to be at risk.

Should the Eurozone fail to repair its problems, the global financial sector would breach under a ripple effect far greater than observed in 2008 after the Lehamn Brothers collapse. Yet it is more and more apparent that perhaps Brussels does not want the problem to be solved. Whilst economic crisis may lead to human misery as we are seeing in Greece, it also, rather conveniently, allows Brussels to conduct the most flagrant power grab for the final slice of federal pie – fiscal integration. For he who controls the money also controls the power

The European Spring

It's not often I read an article in The Guardian with such zeal, especially not an opinion piece.

But today's column by Costa Douzinas, a professor at Birkbeck University in London who has authored and co-authored texts examining the philosophical underpinnings of law making such as human rights, was interesting indeed.

He talks about the possibility of a European Spring of revolution with forthcoming elections in France and Greece. We also have the English local elections tomorrow while Germany will see whether Merkel's leadership amidst ongoing crisis in the Eurozone retains kudos among the voterate. There is also the matter of a collapsed government in the Netherlands and forthcoming local elections in Italy.

The juxtaposition of polls in France, Greece, Germany and the UK alongside ongoing battles to save the single currency couldn't be sweeter for a political theoretician. It would appear in France that Nicholas Sarkozy may become a one-term president and yet another victim of the financial crisis as the public turns towards socialist Hollande's rhetoric against austerity rather than keeping faith in the Merkozy strategem that has so far dominated Eurozone fiscal policy.

Meanwhile, the general election in Greece will be the public's first opportunity to show through the ballot their verdict on their country's financial collapse, and it is likely we will see a surprising result that will prevent either of the two main parties from the past four decades gain an outright majority.

In Italy, local elections will act as litmus for the parachuted-in technocrat Mario Monti who replaced the disgraced Berlusconi last year, while a key regional election in northern Germany in Schleswif-Holstein will determine whether Merkel's popularity and reputation are finally beginning to falter despite relatively secure German faith in her competence to date.

Regarding the run offs for Presidency in France, many newspapers have reported Merkel's open opposition to her old ally's contender. The German Premier has criticised Hollande's posturing against the ongoing austerity programme that has largely been coordinated by Merkel and Sarkozy, threatening to rip up the deal and demand a re-write, a move that many believe could topple the powerful axis of Franco-German driven leadership of the Eurozone and potentially lead to a free-for-all across single currency members at a time when the leadership for a number of countries is set to change. Euroscepticism has crept into manifestos from left to right. What, or more to the point, who, results from elections in Greece is therefore potentially the first dramatic change of power and sentiment that will have been observed in a European country since the outbreak of the Euro crisis.

This is essentially what Mr Douzinas is warning, although unlike a number of other commentators, leaping to the defence of current ruling centre-right governments, he suggests it is the far left, and not the far right, who would become the decision makers in this keystone member state. However he does betray his concern that

"Part of this picture – its most worrying aspect – is the rush to the right by mainstream politicians who, imitating Sarkozy, compete to display their nationalist credentials. Coalition ministers Michalis Chrysochoidis and Andreas Loverdos have spread panic about immigrants as criminals and carriers of infectious diseases, and have set up detention camps in order to contain this "threat"...Meanwhile Athens' Mayor Kaminis has, with Chrysochoidis, organised campaigns to "cleanse" the city of migrants, while the coalition plans an anti-immigration wall on the Greco-Turkish border."


It's a highly interesting observation and one that we have seen mainstream media across Europe discuss with regards to elections in all of the member states.

What we need to address is the unspoken reality of both the creation of fiscal crisis and the subsequent way through the mess.


The majority of countries struggling under alarming debt have reached this stage due to high structural deficits; that is, essentially, the mathematical problem that the cost of running public services afforded by government borrowing far outweighs the income potential of the country in question.

Many theorists have come up with simple studies that support various ideas relating to financial crisis, many of which newspapers are not shy to publish.

I have read articles that muse over the fall in birthrate during depression times, the increase of marriage and reduction in divorce, and many other variations relating to consumer trends, from holidays to hoummous, to abandoned pets and soaring university entrance in countries with high youth unemployment.

Over all, a general picture being painted is that humans, on a collective subconscious level, realise the need to club together resources and reduce financial burden in periods of economic decline.

It surely makes sense. Animals living in the most extreme environments containing minimal resources often betray similar characteristics. Penguins for instance have only one mate, forge a large community and give birth to just one baby each. In boom times, certain species will see propogation exponentially increase as both survival rates soar and reduced competiton factors in its influence, thus the converse is likely to be true when the situation is reversed.

Something else that is true however, is that in times of scarcity, a natural social collective in the animal kingdom is ever more likely to fight off the threat from co-existing groups of the same species. When everyone is competing for the same resources, the tendency to share is greatly reduced and competition over what is available intensifies.

It is hardly surprising then, that in the midst of a financial crisis, anti-immigrant rhetoric also intensifies, yet rather than acknowledging the evident reasoning for this and working to satiate public concern before it topples over into xenophobia, governments continue to fail to address the problem.

It is not "racist" to determine that your nation's services and resources can only stretch so far, particularly during a time of struggle. This attitude does not betray latent opposition to other cultures or nationalities, nor should it suggest xenophobia. What it does do however is reinforce the concept of nationhood, but what is one to expect when the perceived borders of democratic control are divvied up along national frontiers? If those lines were  instead drawn macro-regionally, between counties for instance, loyalty would be emboldened on a smaller socio-geographic scale.

Perhaps the commentators, and Mr Douzinas, is right, and what is happening is a creeping empassioned attack based upon ethnicity and ethnography rather than on more level handed demography.

If the rhetoric from the two Greek coaltion ministers is true and is not based upon any conceivable proven fact, then the problem is severe when competing parties are reduced to conflating race with liability for being a vector of disease. Indeed such a supposition is the thin end of a wedge, and something I oppose from the bottom of my heart. However, and I would tentatively observe rather than ordain here, the notion that it is not uncommon for anybody coming from outside of a community, be it a returning native or a newly arrived foreigner, to bring with them the threat of an infection that is perhaps uncommon in a particular society, and thus potentially poses a greater threat.

I find myself torturously re-reading this to ensure that what I have written comes across as evidently objective and reasonable, lest to avoid any sort of ill intentioned criticism. But the point is, I shouldn't. This is afterall why we have jabs before holidaying in foreign countries, or have to present a yellow fever certificate for entry into others.Nobody would call such policy making racist or xenophobic. It is common sense. Yet the very fact that it has become so difficult to even word certain topics, being careful of references and examples one uses, so as to avoid any possible misinterpretation of offense, has become the root of a very real social and political problem.

Because it has become politically incorrect to talk candidly  about issues such as population size, limited resources, birthrates, immigration, migration and citizenship, voters who are not finding moderate concerns accommodated by the government or the main opposition party are seeking solace in marginal organisations who opportunisticly address such taboos and converet them  into valence issues.

I want to point out here however that the present climate is not just fertile ground for distasteful extremists.

More importantly smaller viable parties who have not had the opportunity to rise due to media control or hereditary voting habits are now finding an arena in which such issues often avoided by ruling parties but addressed on the sidelines are coming to a fore, and it is allowing the public to finally, democratically represent their misgivings in the political fora.

It is not always just a protest vote, but a genuine realisation that there are other political groups out their with sound policy making, fair judgement and very good ideas.

Voting is not like supporting a football team. Certainly when your sports team have a bad season you don't suddenly ditch them and start cheering for the premiership victors. But politics should not be like that. You do not have to vote Conservative or Labour simply because you have done so all your life. You have the opportunity, and dare I say it, the responsibility as an adult with a right to vote, to read through all the available manifestos and make a decision based upon honest and considered calculation.

UKIP are one such party who are on the rise. In all recent polls we are level pegging with the Liberal Democrats if not ahead, but still we won't get the same amount of coverage.

That is because the partisan press in the UK are backing one of the three main parties, and UKIP is a threat to them all. For that reason we are easy to throw stones at. But it is the very misguided critics out there who are quick to raise unsubstantiated and alarmist claims in order to defend the major parties that are actually creating a far right movement by not giving decent and responsible smaller parties like UKIP the platform for debate.

In my view, UKIP are not even on the right hand side of an assumed political spectrum, yet so often we are labelled as "far right" as an excuse to defend the parties that we threaten because they are failing to address voter sympathies. It has therefore become all too easy for issues such as immigration to be conflated with xenophobia, and yet nobody out there knows why.

Why can't we talk about this frankly without feeling worried that we are going to be judged?

Well a political scientist might just flag up similar reasoning to what I have just described. The combination of the mistakes of history and a public sense of guilt becomes easy fodder for political communicators to use to drum up a culture of fear over smaller parties in order to marginalise any party that is a threat to a ruling group. As a result, key electoral issues become matters of dangerous taboo.

If collectively across Europe, smaller, responsible and well-intentioned parties, whether they reside on a fictitious left or a fictitious right, grow in prominence and enable the formation of a European Spring, then I will be happy if it topples the hegemonic might of Brussels - with minimal fall-out.

However if they are not allowed to do this, what we will see is the creation of a blackmarket of political thought where less than savoury ideologies are allowed to prosper.

And so I implore voters across the European Union. Vote wisely, vote sensibly, but vote with your heart and mind. If that means breaking with convention, then have the conviction to do so. For that is the real measure of democracy.